Anti-nuclear campaign group Ican wins Nobel peace prize

In another reaction form Japan, the NGO Peace Boat welcomed the award, writes my colleague Justin McCurry in Tokyo.

“For the last 72 years, survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have bravely shared their horrific experience to raise public awareness about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and the urgent need to abolish them to ensure nobody ever has to endure what they have suffered,” it said.

“It is thanks to their tireless efforts and to the mobilisation of people, organisations and governments that the groundbreaking Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted on July 7 and opened to signatures on September 20 of this year.”

In Japan, the only country to suffer an atomic bombing in the closing days of the second world, this year’s Nobel peace prize resonated with many.

Sunao Tsuboi, a 92-year-old survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, said he was overjoyed to hear of the Nobel peace award going to those who were also working toward the abolition of nuclear weapons.

He said that “as long as I live, I hope to work toward a realization of a world without nuclear weapons with ICAN and many other people.”

Tsuboi, whose ear is partly missing and his face blotched with burn marks, is co-chair of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, or Hidankyo, and has devoted his life to the fight to eradicate nuclear weapons, stressing that the weapon is designed simply to kill.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which closely monitors international arms sales, has welcomed Ican’s win.

“Almost 50 years ago, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty committed the nuclear weapon states to achieve nuclear disarmament. The effectiveness of the campaign by Ican is a sign of widespread impatience with what many see as the failure to do that,” said Dan Smith, Sipri’s director.

Increasing nuclear risks are “exemplified by recent nuclear developments in North Korea and the increasing vulnerability of” the Iran nuclear deal, Sipri added.

“The world has witnessed declining respect for the unique destructive capacity of nuclear weapons. At a time when the nuclear threat is increasing, Ican reminds us that it is important to imagine a world in which they do not exist.”

Ican director thought prize was 'a prank'

Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, has given her first reaction the organisation winning the 2017 Nobel peace prize.

She said the group had received a phone call minutes before the official announcement was but she thought it was “a prank”. She said she didn’t believe it until heard the name of the group during the peace prize announcement in Oslo.

Fihn said the award “sends a message to all nuclear-armed states and all states that continue to rely on nuclear weapons for security that it is unacceptable behaviour ... We can’t threaten to indiscriminately slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians in the name of security. That’s not how you build security.”

The committee said in its formal announcement of this year’s prize that its decision came at time when “the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time”.

It said some states were modernising their nuclear arsenals, and there was “a real danger that more countries will try to procure nuclear weapons, as exemplified by North Korea. Nuclear weapons pose a constant threat to humanity and all life on earth.”

The international community has previously adopted binding prohibitions against land mines, cluster munitions and biological and chemical weapons, it said, but “nuclear weapons are even more destructive” and have not been outlawed.

ICAN has “helped to fill this legal gap”, describing it as “a driving force in prevailing upon the world’s nations to pledge to cooperate with all relevant stakeholders in efforts to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons”.

It said it it wanted to “emphasise that the next steps must involve the nuclear-armed states. This year’s Peace Prize is therefore also a call upon these states to initiate serious negotiations with a view to the gradual, balanced and carefully monitored elimination of the almost 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world.”

It concluded: “It is the firm conviction of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that ICAN, more than anyone else, has in the past year given the efforts to achieve a world without nuclear weapons a new direction and new vigour.”

The committee’s decision comes at a critical time when the US president, Donald Trump, has threatened to decertify and unravel the Iran nuclear deal, which could trigger a second nuclear standoff in the midst of North Korean crisis, writes my colleague Saeed Kamali Dehghan:

Supporters of the Iran nuclear agreement, which settled a decade-long dispute over Tehran’s nuclear programme and averted the risk of yet another war in the Middle East, have argued it is vital to preserve it at the time of simmering tensions with North Korea, which has escalated the crisis by conducing its sixth nuclear test and a series of intermediate and intercontinental missile tests.

Trump has reportedly decided to decertify Iran’s compliance with the landmark nuclear deal next week. On Thursday, he told a meeting of US military leaders that Tehran was not living up to the “spirit of the agreement” and cryptically added they were witnessing “the calm before the storm”.

The European Union, in contrast, has said that it is doing everything it can to salvage the deal in the event of a US withdrawal. The EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said last month after facilitating a meeting of foreign ministers in New York, that Iran was abiding by the agreement and “there is no need to reopen the agreement because it’s fully delivering”.

In remarks which appeared to be aimed at Trump’s threats, she said: “The agreement is being implemented. It’s working. It’s delivering. It’s not for one party or the other to certify this. It’s for the IAEA, with its technical independent role, to provide us reports and it’s for the entire Joint Commission to monitor the implementation of all this.”

Sir Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Tehran, said this award is “a challenge to the International Community, led by the UN Security Council, to protect this historic non-proliferation agreement [Iran deal], which is vital for regional peace, from its detractors.”

Ican has been “sounding the alarm over the massive dangers posed by nuclear weapons and campaigning for a global ban” for the past decade, the AFP news agency reported when it interviewed the group’s head this week.

Although the nuclear treaty was a significant victory, actual disarmament is still a long way off. “We’re not done yet... The job isn’t done until nuclear weapons are gone,” the organisations head, Beatrice Fihn, told AFP.

Pointing to the current nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang as “a wake-up call”, she insisted on the urgent need to disarm the world’s 15,000 or so nuclear weapons. “Nuclear weapons have the risk of literally ending the world. As long as they exist, the risk will be there, and eventually our luck will run out.”

Based in the offices of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Ican works with 468 non-governmental organisations across 101 countries, including rights, development, environmental and peace groups.

It has an annual budget of about $1m and is funded by private donations as well as the European Union and countries including Norway, Switzerland, Germany and the Vatican.

“The more countries we can rally to reject nuclear weapons and the more public opinion changes to think that this is unacceptable, the harder it is going to be for the nuclear-armed states to justify it,” Fihn told AFP.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s choice amounts to a reprimand to the world’s nine nuclear-armed powers, all of whom boycotted the negotiations for the treaty – reached in July at the United Nations – and described the treaty as dangerous.

The treaty was endorsed by 122 countries at the UN headquarters in New York after months of talks an in the face of strong opposition from the nuclear-armed states and their allies.

None of the nine countries that possess nuclear weapons - the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel - took part in the negotiations.

And the treaty will only enter into force when 50 countries have signed and ratified it, a process that could take months or years.

Well that was a surprise. Most of the pre-announcement chatter had been predicting the winners would be Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, and Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, for their part in the Iran nuclear deal.

Instead the committee has chosen Ican, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a global group working to promote adherence to, and full implementation of, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

The campaign, which helped bring about the treaty, was launched in 2007 and today counts 468 partner organisations in 101 countries. The treaty is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons.

Ican anti-nuclear weapons campaign wins 2017 Nobel Peace prize

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) has been awarded the 2107 Nobel Peace prize.

The chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, said the award had been made in recognition of the group’s work “to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons”.

What is the prize formally awarded for? In his will, signed on 27 November 1895, the Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel left the bulk of his fortune to a series of prizes, with one to be awarded to:

... the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

In fact, 66 peace prizes have been given to just one single laureate – an individual or an organisation. On 29 occasions the prize has gone to two laureates, and twice it has been awarded to three, the maximum allowed under the Nobel Foundation’s statutes.

The average age of the winners so far is 61, with the youngest – by some margin – being Malala Yousafzai who was just 14 when she won in 2014. Of the 104 individuals who have won a prize, just 16 have been women.

One punter has put a £3,000 bet on Donald Trump winning the prize this year at odds of 100/1, according to the online betting platform Bonus Code Bets.

The odds are the same for Vladimir Putin collecting the award, and – in an even more unlikely outcome – bets have also been taken on Trump and Putin winning jointly.

PaddyPower put Donald Trump among the top contenders, currently at 20/1. The company said Pope Francis tops the betting at evens, ahead of German chancellor Angela Merkel (13/5), and the White Helmets (3/1).

Bookmakers have estimated that bets totalling nearly £10m have been made on this year’s prize, up more than 60% on last year.

The front runners

Although nobody really has a clue who the committee will choose, the Peace Research Institute Oslo – which is not connected to the prize – comes up with an annual list of nominees it considers likely winners (it’s often wrong), and the betting markets also have their favourites.

This year’s hot tips include:

Mohammad Javad Zarif and Federica Mogherini, the Iranian foreign minister and EU foreign policy chief, for their part in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal (this would be seen as a strong signal to Donald Trump, who has threatened to tear the deal up)

The White Helmets, formally known as the Syrian Civil Defence, and their leader Raed al Saleh, nominated several times already for their courageous and continuing efforts to help civilians in a brutal war

Can Dündar, the Turkish journalist, and Cumhuriyet, the newspaper he formerly edited, many of whose staff have faced prosecution as part of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s crackdown on press freedoms in Turkey

The UN high commission for refugees and its chief Filippo Grandi for their efforts during a period of unprecedented global migration and displacement

Pope Francis, nominated for “standing up to Donald Trump” but a possible winner for his strong on refugees, poverty, social justice and climate change.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), for its efforts to uphold fundamental rights in the US – often in the courts – in the face of what many see as an unprecedented assault by Trump

Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger sentenced to years in jail and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam through his website and in TV comments.

Ninety seven Nobel peace prizes have been awarded since 1901, to 130 different laureates. Among the most popular winners, according to the Nobel Prize organisation, have been Martin Luther King Junior, Malala Yousafzai, Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela and Rigoberta Menchu.

Mot all awards have been popular, however, or arguably even deserved.

Writing in the Guardian, Arwa Mahdawi described the prize as “a who’s who of hawks, hypocrites and war criminals”, with Aung San Suu Kyi – awarded the 1991 Nobel peace prize “for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights” – just the latest laureate to “bring the prize into disrepute”.

More than 400,000 people have signed a petition demanding Aung San Suu Kyi be stripped of her prize after spending weeks failing to acknowledge, condemn or halt appalling human rights abuses being committed against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

Others who probably shouldn’t have won include Henry Kissinger, who was recognised in 1973 for his efforts in negotiating a Vietnam war ceasefire but had carpet-bombed Cambodia, and Shimon Peres, joint winner in 1994 with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, who helped build up Israel’s nuclear capabilities.

Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, is due to announce the winner in the grand main hall of the Norwegian Nobel Institute in central Oslo at – or soon after – 11am local time.

Some 318 candidates are thought to have been nominated for this year’s prize, although there is no way of knowing for sure because apart from the winner, the names of the nominees are officially kept secret by the committee for at least 50 years.

However, the people who do the nominating – including elected politicians, former laureates, international judges, and academics in selected disciplines – often announce their candidates when they nominate them. Rumours and false reports or nominations, though, are equally common.

Among the individuals and organisation said to have been nominated this year – some attracting substantial bets – are Lions Club International, Julian Assange, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jo Cox, the Bulgarian Orthodox church, David Bowie, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

We’ll be bringing you the announcement as it happens, along with speculation about those considered the frontrunners beforehand and reaction afterwards.